their head fought against other peoples of Asia. On his return he
recorded his exploits on the walls of his palace in a long inscription
in which he told of his victories, the booty which he had taken, the
cities burned, the captives beheaded or flayed alive. We present some
passages from these stories of campaigns:

Assurnazir-hapal in 882 says, "I built a wall before the great gates
of the city; I flayed the chiefs of the revolt and with their skins I
covered this wall. Some were immured alive in the masonry, others were
crucified or impaled along the wall. I had some of them flayed in my
presence and had the wall hung with their skins. I arranged their
heads like crowns and their transfixed bodies in the form of
garlands."

In 745 Tiglath-Pilezer II writes, "I shut up the king in his royal
city. I raised mountains of bodies before his gates. All his villages
I destroyed, desolated, burnt. I made the country desert, I changed it
into hills and mounds of débris."

In the seventh century Sennacherib wrote: "I passed like a hurricane
of desolation. On the drenched earth the armor and arms swam in the
blood of the enemy as in a river. I heaped up the bodies of their
soldiers like trophies and I cut off their extremities. I mutilated
those whom I took alive like blades of straw; as punishment I cut off
their hands." In a bas-relief which shows the town of Susa
surrendering to Assurbanipal one sees the chiefs of the conquered
tortured by the Assyrians; some have their ears cut off, the eyes of
others are put out, the beard torn out, while some are flayed alive.
Evidently these kings took delight in burnings, massacres, and
tortures.